


Embers in the Sky

by PandoraTheExplorer



Series: Month of Drabbles Challenge 2018 [17]
Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, set after BOO but before TOA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 07:31:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16081412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraTheExplorer/pseuds/PandoraTheExplorer
Summary: The Seven in the aftermath of the war.





	Embers in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Day 24 of my 2018 Month of Drabbles Challenge.

Often Piper would find that her feet moved on her own. She would be lost in her own world of what-ifs and could-have-beens and would look up to see her surroundings change from her cabin to the trees surrounding the camp. She never tried to stop herself when she wandered-what was the point? She didn’t really care about where she would go either because she would always end up in the same place.

Bunker Nine is always somewhat empty when Piper visits. She knew that the Hephaestus cabin still worked there-although she doubted they would be able to make anything quite as splendid as they used to when they had their old counsellor. Piper wasn’t actually sure whether there were people in Bunker Nine with her-she wouldn’t have talked to them even if they were there, anyway. She would always be focused on one particular area of the bunker, where the frame of the Argo II used to lie.

Piper is never sure how long she would sit there. Sometimes she would look up to see a short Hispanic boy with that familiar shit-eating grin and look down at the hand he’s offered her. Then she would see that boy dissipate into thin air before she had the chance to take that hand. At first Piper would think that it was one of the Hecate cabin kids playing tricks on her eyes, but then she realized that the only people who came to Bunker Nine at all were the Hephaestus kids and she.

~

Jason was having fun until the fireworks came on. The last day of summer came with celebration-for another year survived and the second war won in two years. He received his first bead for his necklace-a tiny painting of the SPQR symbol with the names of all of Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter’s fallen written around it. Piper helped him tie his necklace on and he helped her. Percy and Annabeth gently guided the both of them away from the campfire and handed them each a glass of coke.

Then Jason was falling. Fire rained around him as Leo waved him goodbye and Piper screamed and cried. Jason screamed too-Leo had to jump. Festus was going to explode and Leo was going to die if he Jason didn’t catch him. Fuck Gaea. Jason didn’t care if she died or not. He would fight a thousand wars against a thousand primordials if he could save his best friend.

Piper was clutching his shoulders and whispering into his ear. Jason squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The fire was gone. He wasn’t falling anymore. Frank and Hazel crowded around him while Percy and Annabeth shooed away anyone else who was staring. Jason collapsed into Piper’s arms and sobbed. He couldn’t save Leo in time. Why did he get to survive when Leo didn’t?

~

Reyna would always tell Frank that it wasn’t his fault. That he shouldn’t think about it too hard. He had only known about being a demigod for less than a year, but he should learn that friends and comrades never survived for long. He shouldn’t get too attached lest the person he is attached to disappears for six months or joins a league of warrior women and leaves him behind or explodes in a ball of flames on top of a battlefield.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t Frank’s fault, though. He knew what was going to happen and didn’t stop it. He and Hazel even kept the secret so none of the others could stop it. He had every chance to tell Jason or Piper of Percy or Annabeth or somebody. 

Frank had trusted Leo with his life, and in turn Leo had trusted Frank to end his. If Frank had spoken up about it, would his friends be as broken as they are? He was the Praetor now. He was supposed to save people. How could he have kept a secret that lead his friend to his death?

~

Hazel likes to train to keep her mind off things. Manipulating the Mist into monsters was simple to do. A twitch of the thumb and a flick of the wrist was all it took to create a Cyclops for her to stab in the eye, or a Dracaena for her to slice in half. She’s gotten better at this. It used to take her so much effort just to make that fake vial for Piper to-

Hazel turned. Standing behind her was Sammy-no-Leo. She wasn’t sure which it was. She also wasn’t sure if it mattered. Sammy-Leo held out his arms and Hazel dove into the embrace, tears sliding down her cheeks as she pounded against his chest and gave anguished cries. How dare he abandon her? How dare he let her leave him to die?

When Hazel was all out of tears to cry with and air to scream with, she let her arms drop. The illusion of Sammy/Leo, which Hazel had so carefully crafted, disappeared. Maybe if she imagined hard enough the real Leo could have met his end the same way-silently slipping away instead of painfully being blasted out of this world.

~

Annabeth was surprised that even after all this, she just felt numb. First it was Thalia, even though she ended up not really being gone in the end. Next it was Luke. Now it was Leo. Why was it always the people she cared about, the people who understood her-that always die?

Piper didn’t talk to her as much as they used to. Annabeth could often see her wandering around the woods around the camp, talking to herself or to someone who wasn’t there anymore. Annabeth had nothing to say to Piper anymore either-or Jason or even Percy. How could words mend anything when your whole life fell to pieces with the spark of a lit fuse?

Months later Annabeth’s dad calls her and tells her that her cousin was missing. She packed her things and left by sunset that day with only a “goodbye” to Chiron and what was left of the Seven. She would be back-she would always be back. She just needed a change of pace.

~

Percy honestly thought that the whole quest could have gone worse. He and Annabeth could have died in Tartaurus, or Gaea could have actually killed two of his friends for her sacrifice. Frank’s piece of wood could have burned up. Hazel could have been sent back to the Underworld. Jason and Piper could have fell to their deaths after being thrown from the explosion that killed Leo.

Still, Leo’s death was one too many. Percy kept playing back the memory of the battle at Camp Half-Blood. Could he have saved Leo? Maybe he could have grabbed him while on the Argo II and jumped off. But then what would have happened? Leo wouldn’t have been able to kill Gaea. The world would have been destroyed because Percy wanted to save his friend.

Percy thought back to what every god he’d come across had told him. Loyalty was his fatal flaw. He would let the world die if it meant saving his friends. Percy didn’t even know Leo as well as the others-he was stuck in Tartaurus for half the time that he’d known him. Yet, when Percy thought about his choice between the fate of the world and Leo, he knew that he could choose saving Leo. He knew the logical choice would be to let Leo die and keep his friends AND the world safe, but Percy had never been very logical. He was tired of having to make this choice over and over. Maybe it was time to move on from these choices. He just wanted a normal life, dammit.

~

~

~

Leo was slowly getting used to the flames dancing across his palms. It’s a working progress, but someday he might be able to let the flames run without hearing Jason and Piper’s screams, or seeing the light of the explosion grow until he could see nothing at all, or feeling the shrapnel cut into his body, slicing his veins until his blood ran out, and-

Even with Calypso as his assistant, it took a while for Leo to get Festus functional enough to fly the stretch of ocean that was the Atlantic. He sent a message to his friends to let them know that he was alive, but months passed without any reply. 

As offended as he was at that, Leo couldn’t help but see some sense in his friends’ lack of response. He was a small spark in the Sevens’ lives that burned brightly for a few months. No matter how warm his flame, no matter how hotly he flared, eventually the rest of the Seven were left with the cold after he was extinguished.

And the Seven had moved on. Leo was sure of that. Even after the earth tore apart at their feet and the sky burst into a halo of unholy light, life still moves forwards, even if the lives of certain individuals no longer did. Leo had discovered long ago that running away was the only way to cope. To fault his friends for doing the same was to be a hypocrite.  
After all, the world keeps on moving-even without its seventh wheel.

**Author's Note:**

> Good job Leo you've single-handedly fucked up your friends' entire mental well-beings for the rest of their lives.


End file.
